


Paper Tigers

by murmuration



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Self-Discovery, brief mention of 1960s gender roles, implied erik/charles - Freeform, implied past Raven/Erik
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-07
Updated: 2014-09-07
Packaged: 2018-02-16 10:36:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2266545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murmuration/pseuds/murmuration
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mystique can become anyone.  Raven still isn't sure who she wants to be.  Charles and Erik aren't helping.</p>
<p>Scenes from the life of Mystique, before and during DOFP, focusing on her relationship with Charles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paper Tigers

**Author's Note:**

> So I like Cherik as much as the next person, but after watching Days of Future Past, I really wanted to read more stories focused on Raven and her search for her own identity. I feel like Mystique has (after Magneto) some of the most inconsistent characterization in the new movies and in places I was left scratching my head at the motivation behind her actions. Somehow this fic resulted. I can't even tell if it's good or bad, I'm just excited that I actually finished writing something. SO EXCITED, you have no idea.
> 
> I haven't seen the movie since it first came out, so if some of the scenes/dialogue aren't perfectly accurate, mea culpa. Hopefully I got them pretty close.

When Raven was younger, she tried not to think about her life before Charles.  Now Mystique can barely recall life before she left Charles behind. 

(That’s what she tells herself).

As it tends to be, the truth is more complicated.  Raven may have made her home in that house on Graymalkin Lane, but Mystique found her beginnings there, too.  Like so many things, it all began on that night when a lonely little blue girl met a lonely little rich boy.

* * *

Raven was still reeling from the shock of meeting someone who didn’t react in horror at the sight of her face, someone who looked at her with wonder and delight, when the boy grabbed her by the arm and pulled her toward the hallway.  “Come on,” he said, “I’m going to give you a tour.  You can pick out a bedroom wherever you like.  You already know where the kitchen is, of course, feel free to help yourself when you’re hungry.  And I’ll show you the library, we have thousands of books, literally thousands, you can read any of them--“

“--I can’t read,” she blurted.

“…what?” The boy came to a sudden halt, dropping her hand and turning to face her.  Her cheeks warmed under the weight of his disbelief.  “What do you mean you can’t _read_?”

Raven studied her toes intently.  They stood out starkly against the red of the oriental carpeting.  “I never went to school.  Not like other kids.  I mean – I just had to – I couldn’t be normal, not for long enough, and it didn’t seem important…”

She glanced back up at the boy, who seemed to have recovered a bit from his shock.  “Well,” he said, taking a deep breath, “Don’t worry about it.  We’ll fix that, I promise.  I may not be the best teacher in the world, but reading is simple.  You’ll get the hang of it in no time.  So.”  He grabbed her hand again and smiled.  “A bedroom.  And, uh…” His eyes swept quickly down her body before he looked away, blushing.  “…and some pajamas, I think.”

Raven spent that night wrapped in clean, warm blankets in a bed big enough to hold ten small girls.  It took her a long time fall asleep (she kept thinking that at any moment, someone would appear and start screaming at her for daring to touch such nice things), but when she finally drifted off, her dreams were vague and pleasant.

* * *

There were two things that Raven learned about Charles right away.  The first, which she began to suspect the moment she met him, was that his heart was always in the right place.  The second, which she discovered soon after, was that Charles was wrong about a lot of things.  More specifically and immediately, he was wrong about reading being simple.

“Come on, Raven, you can do this.  Honestly, if you’d just pay attention—“

“I’m _trying_ ,” she huffed, folding her arms across her chest.  “It’s just not interesting.  Who wants to read about – about people talking to each other.  They’re not real.  You can’t see their faces, you can’t tell what they’re thinking.  It’s just a bunch of dead letters on a sheet of paper.”

“You create the scene with your mind.”  Charles bit his lip and scowled, visibly frustrated after a morning spent failing to interest her in his favorite book.  “You imagine the characters, you bring them to life in your head.”

“Well, I’d rather talk to real people.  The ones that aren’t in my head.  Drop it already, Charles. Let’s do something else.”

For a minute he looked like he wanted keep arguing, but then he sighed and turned away.  They spent the afternoon making the biggest, most ridiculous ice cream sundaes they could manage, and she thought that would be the end of it.  But one week later, Charles came into her room with a giant stack of paper and an even bigger smile.

“No, Charles.”

His face creased into a pout.  “You don’t even know what it is yet.”

“It looks like paper and I’m betting it has words on it.  That makes it your thing, not mine.”

He flopped down next to her, spilling brightly colored images across her bedspread.

“Ugh, what did I say? Get it off!”

“It’s just paper, Raven.  I promise it isn’t contagious.”

“How would you know? You’ve probably developed immunity already.”

“Hmm.”  His brow wrinkled as he pretended to ponder the question.  “Good point.  We should conduct an experiment.”  He picked up a piece of the contraband and lunged at her, smashing it against her face. 

Raven shrieked and twisted, trying to get away.  She had almost managed it when her foot caught Charles hard in the gut. He fell off the bed with an impressive-sounding thump and Raven froze. 

“Sorry! Sorry, I’m sorry.  Charles, you jerk, are you okay?”  She craned her neck over the side of the bed and saw him lying on his back, the offending literature still clutched in one hand.

“Oof.”  He winced.  “Did anyone ever tell you that you kick like a mule?”

“I’m sorry.  But it was an accident, and it’s your fault anyway.”  She reached out both hands and pulled him up to a sitting position.  “Okay.  Show me what you’re so excited about that you’re willing to get mauled over it.”

Just like that, the lingering trances of pain in his face vanished and he beamed up at her.  “I know how we can teach you to read, Raven! I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.  You said the problem was the people, not being able to see their faces, their expressions.  Well—“

He presented her with the item in his hand with a flourish.  She took it with significantly less enthusiasm.

“Man...dor...the...Muh-mag...magnificent? Really?”

“Yes! See, comic books have pictures with the dialogue, expressions so you can gauge the emotions of the characters.  I was thinking, perhaps your heavy reliance on body language has something to do with your mutation, it’s entirely possible that as a shapeshifter—“

“Okay,” she said quickly.  (Sometimes it was better to cut him off before he really got going).  “We’ll try it this way.  But no promises.”

“Of course.” 

He pulled his body back up onto the bed and crawled over to the headboard, settling in amongst the pillows before patting the space next to him.  Raven ignored the pillows entirely in favor of cuddling into Charles’s shoulder, burying her nose in the soothing smell of clean laundry as he began to read.  They sat there together for hours, making their way through the mountain of ink and paper.

That day, Raven learned a third thing about Charles.  You see, as frequently as he was wrong?

He was right even more often.

***

Raven’s love of comic books never grew into a love of reading in general, much to Charles’s dismay.  But even years later, when she would have told anyone who asked that she was much too sophisticated for such childish things, she kept a stack tucked under her bed like a dirty secret.  She was never very fond of Mandor the Magnificent (too showy by half, and possibly colorblind -- his outfit was an eyesore), but characters like Cadabra the Magician, the Red Hand, and Dragonfire lit up her secret dreams.  Her absolute favorite, her idol, was Silver the She-Wolf.  Most of the time, Silver was an elegant, mysterious woman who said little and gave away even less.  But sometimes, especially when the moon was full, she transformed into a creature with the strength and grace of a wolf – and the fangs and claws to match.  The two personas shared a fearless attitude, a deep sense of justice, and a pair of eerie golden eyes.

Sometimes, when she was alone in her room, Raven would take the form of her favorite heroine just to stare at herself in the mirror, admiring the sleek white dress and glinting bangles that Silver wore while playing the part of a high-society heiress.  She imagined herself gliding through the throngs of people, delivering a cutting remark here and an approving glance there, awash in a sea of awe and admiration.  But no matter how hard she tried to get the look exactly right, she was never able to convince herself.  It was the eyes that tripped her up.  Maybe it was only her imagination, but she thought she saw a longing there, a fear that was never visible in Silver’s golden gaze.  Whatever the reason, as she grew older she took on Silver’s form less and less.  Instead, she tried imagining herself as a superhero, as someone strong and clever and glamorous.  She even came up with a secret identity – _Mystique_ – and if Charles ever heard that name in her head, for once he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut about it.

On that fateful, horrible day in Cuba, Raven chose to follow Magneto because she wanted a chance to become Mystique in truth -- to stop being that silly little girl who stared into her mirror and dreamed about changing the world and become the strong woman who would accomplish it.  And at first, despite all her loneliness and fear, despite all the nights she cried herself to sleep and pretended that she was fine when the morning came, it seemed to be working.  Every day that she trained in hand-to-hand combat, she grew less afraid and more confident in her own skills.  Every time they rescued another mutant from shame and terror, she grew more certain that she could make the world a better place for her kind.

It only took one month to fall apart.

* * *

It was easy to lose track of where you were when you traveled by teleporter, but God, for all that she couldn’t locate it on a map she would never forget the dirty bathroom where she was currently crouched on the floor, puking her guts out.  The heavy humidity of the air, the grime smeared across the tile, the fetid stink of human waste, they were all seared into her mind.  There was buzzing in her ears, but she wasn’t sure if it was a symptom of her sickness or just the sound of the biting flies that seemed to be everywhere.

Raven could hear footsteps approaching, too heavy to be Angel’s.  It had to be Erik; no one else knew her well enough to come after her.  The door creaked open, and she waited in vain for him to speak.  The sound of his breathing was the only thing that broke the silence as he loomed over her.

“I have to go back.”  It was the only thing she knew, the only thing that made sense right now.  Erik stepped forward and knelt next to her, but still said nothing.  She turned her head to face him.  “Did you hear me?  I have to go back.”

He pursed his lips and sighed, looking away from her.  “I know how you feel right now,” he started cautiously, “but we can’t--”

“You don’t.  You have no idea how I feel right now.  NO idea.  Don’t you try to tell me how I feel!”  In a corner of her mind Raven knew that she was overreacting, but it felt so good to lash out, to let the anger burn away the sick feeling inside of her for just a moment.

Erik didn’t answer her immediately.  Later she would be impressed with his patience, but for now she was just annoyed that he was depriving her of an argument.

“Maybe not,” he agreed after a moment.  “You knew Charles much longer than I did.  But do you really think there isn’t a part of me that wants to run right back to him?  Especially since it was my fau--”  He choked on the word and took a deep breath before continuing.  “—since Moira was shooting at me?” he finished.

Raven glanced over at him.  Now that she was paying attention, she saw the red in his eyes, the hollow half-circles that drooped beneath them.  It didn’t change anything.  “I have to go back,” she said again.  “I’m his only family.  I have to take care of him.”

“He has the boys with him.  Beast and Havok and Banshee will take care of him.  We have other priorities now.”  When she refused to even look at him, he tried another tack.  “You’ve come so far since you’ve been here.  You’ve done so much.  Do you really want to go back to being Charles’s pet, scraping for his approval and fawning all over him every time he smiles at you?”

Just like that, her rage surged back in full force.  “Are you still talking about me,” she spat, “or is that what tell yourself when you try to justify abandoning him?”

Magneto rocked back on his heels like he had been slapped, tension in every line of his body.  He towered over her when he stood, so much taller than her poor wounded brother.  Poor Charles, who would never stand again.

“Mystique!”  he barked.  The name fell across her back like a lash, straightening her spine.  “Are you going to abandon all the mutants out there who need us?  When we raid the CIA compound in a week, what should I tell the mutants who are being caged and tortured by the Government?  That they just weren’t worth your time and attention?”

Tears ran down her face, fast and hot, so many that she could barely see.  The world was a blur as she stood to face Magneto.  “Damn you,” she hissed, practically shaking with rage and anguish, “damn you to hell.”  She shoved past him and through the door, not calm enough to change shape and not aware enough to care about what would happen if some unsuspecting human saw her blue skin.  She wasn’t sure how long she walked, trying to think about nothing and failing miserably.

_He’s wrong_ , she told herself.  _It doesn’t matter that Charles has other people to take care of him.  They’re not family.  I’m not being selfish by going back._

She returned to the base just as the sun was setting.  Magneto looked up as she entered and nodded in acknowledgment.  They never spoke of the matter again.

* * *

At first, she told herself that there would be time to visit Charles after the next mission.  Or maybe the one after that.  But it seemed like the world had a never-ending supply of hatred, and there were always new mutants to save.  There was never any time to spare, and before she knew it, six months had gone by.  That was when the guilt really started to set in.  How could she show up now, so long after the fact?  What could she possibly say to explain her long absence, her seeming indifference?  The longer she avoided the issue, the easier it was to convince herself that Charles must hate her by now, and it would be better if she just stayed away.

That didn’t mean she didn’t remember.  Sometimes entirely against her will.

Charles had been the first one to teach her that becoming another person was more complicated than just taking on their shape.  She started learning different languages, different accents, paying attention to the postures and habits of the people around her.  She attended acting school for one magnificent year, and all of her instructors told her that she was a true prodigy.  She couldn’t help but think that if the world was a kinder place she might have made a living as an actress.  One day she caught herself imaging what Charles would say if he could see her now, attending school of her own volition.  He wouldn’t even have cared that she was a Drama Major—

She cut the thought off before it could go any further, but the damage was done.  The next day she told her professors that she had gotten engaged and wouldn’t be attending classes anymore.  They were dismayed at the departure of such a promising student, but they didn’t make too much of a fuss – after all, that was just how things were for young ladies of a certain standing.  You didn’t really need a career if you had a decent husband.

That brief stint as a drama student was the last time she had anything close to companionship.  Magneto had disappeared a long time ago, and even before his departure their differences had become increasingly apparent.  Mystique understood self-defense, and could even see the value of an occasional preemptive strike; but Erik went farther, leaving a trail of corpses behind when it would be simpler to pass by unnoticed.  At the time she had struggled to make sense of it, but as the years went by she began to understand.  Every day alone, every wound, every face she saw twisted up in anger or disgust added another layer to the shell she’d created for herself.  Mystique didn’t care if the humans found her ugly or unsettling.  They were beneath her; their opinions mattered as little as the whispering of insects.  Sometimes she stared at the people around her and saw nothing more than straw dolls, mindless creatures for her to ignore or knock out of her way.  Those occasions scared her more than she wanted to admit.  She told herself that she was just getting stronger, becoming the woman she had always dreamed of being.  And if sometimes she still yearned for Charles, for Erik, for Hank, well…she didn’t really believe that she would ever see any of them again.  Her life had become one long fever dream of loneliness and adrenaline, a string of dangerous situations that she survived on skill, wits and sheer dumb luck.  The people that she knew before belonged to a different time, a different girl.     

In short, Charles is the absolute last person she expects to see on the day her luck finally runs out. 

* * *

The day of the Paris summit dawns bright and clear, which is either a good omen or a profound irony.  A little bit of both, probably.  Raven’s stomach is in knots, and even though she spent the night on a plush mattress in a five-star hotel room the tension in her body makes itself known through little pains in her shoulders and neck.  She has to force herself to concentrate, closing her eyes and breathing deep.  Then she opens the door, and the show begins. 

It’s not that the mission is difficult, per se; really, the hardest part is stopping herself from leaping across the table and beating Trask to death with her bare hands the moment she lays eyes on him.  But she keeps seeing flashes of the pictures from those files, her friends and comrades laid out like so much meat on a slab.  Pale.  Dead.  Dismembered.  It makes it more than a little difficult to concentrate.  Still, she manages to hold it together right up until Trask pulls out his mutant detection device.  After that, it doesn’t take long for everything to go to hell in the most spectacular way possible.  So much for the subtle approach.  _Not that the kamikaze option doesn’t have its benefits_ , she thinks, delighting in the audible crack of bone as takes another opponent down.  It feels good to lash out at the men around her, right up until it doesn’t -- until she’s down on the floor, struggling to move and staring up into Charles’s face.      

At first Raven thinks she’s hallucinating.  It only makes sense that she would conjure up an image of comfort at this moment, when she is helpless and in pain.  The room is spinning in nauseating circles and Charles seems to float above her, lines of concern etched between his eyes.  She can’t breathe, can’t even think.  Mystique is in pieces around her, and the little girl that she used to be wants to crawl into Charles’s arms and sleep away the years of pain and solitude.  It seems like a dream she’s had before, Charles stroking her hair while Erik looks on, keeping watch over them both.

Then Erik pulls out a gun, and the dream turns into a nightmare. 

She can hear her voice, scared and childish, pleading for Charles to save her.  Part of her is disgusted with herself.  She hasn’t needed anyone to save her in years.  Still, she has every faith that her brother will come to her rescue – until he doesn’t.

“Why aren’t you stopping him?” she asks, bewildered, but it is Magneto who answers.

“He can’t.”  His voice is flat, his motions mechanical as he takes aim.  Those two words shock her into motion, breaking the standstill.  The world speeds back up until everything seems blurred, a haze of pain and fear she has trouble remembering after the fact.  She runs.  She escapes.  By this point, it’s almost automatic.

She takes the time to catch her breath in a deserted alleyway, disguised as a homeless man dressed in bloody rags.  Her head is spinning, and the more she thinks things over, the less sense the whole encounter makes.  When did Magneto break out of prison?  How is Charles walking?  Why did he come to her now, after all these years?  Why would he bring Erik?  Why couldn’t he stop Magneto from attacking her?  And most importantly, why would Erik try to kill her in the first place?  In the year they trained and traveled together, Erik had watched over her progress with fondness and pride.  They rarely argued, and when they did it was usually because she spoke out against one of his more violent plans.  How ironic, then, that he would attack her the first time she tried to kill a man in cold blood.  It seemed ludicrous that Erik, of all people, would try to stop her from taking her revenge.

She shook her head.  Things weren’t going to get any clearer if she didn’t get more information.  And if she could exact a little payback in the process?  Well, that was just a bonus.

* * *

It’s almost pathetically easy to corner Erik in the subway.  Honestly, she expected better, but maybe he’s out of practice after spending all those years in prison.  He still looks the same as ever, the handsome bastard.  It’s hard to believe that ten years have passed.  Then again, ten years ago she would have been more likely to ambush him with a passionate kiss than a plastic shiv.

Almost as if he can read her mind (and really, isn’t that a scary thought? Charles is bad enough) he makes some crack about how he missed being this close to her.  If his intent is to embarrass her, it doesn’t work; she presses the plastic further into his neck, just shy of drawing blood.  She’s here for one reason, and it isn’t to relive her schoolgirl crush.

“Why did you try to kill me?” she hisses, and as much as she wishes it was otherwise, there is hurt buried under the anger in her voice. 

He keeps his eyes on her and raises his chin in defiance.  “I tried to kill you,” he says, “so that our kind could survive.”

She barely has time to raise her eyebrows in disbelief before Magneto is launching into some bizarre story about a man from the future and killer robots designed by Trask, talking about how they need to change the future if they’re going to stop mutants from being wiped off the face of the earth.  Either prison really has driven him mad or he just thinks she’s that much of a fool.  At this point she’s tempted to run him through and be done with it.

“Stop lying to me!” she growls, but he presses on, insisting that the danger is imminent, that they need to strike a decisive blow before it’s too late.  Mystique is still not ruling out insanity as an option, but he clearly believes what he’s saying.

“We need to act now,” he declares, as confident as if he is the one with the knife to her throat and not the other way around.  “We need to kill more than just Trask if we’re going to win this war.”

“Killing one man never was enough for you,” she replies in disgust.  If Magneto thinks he’s going to talk her into seeing things his way after he just tried to murder her, he’s in for a big disappointment.  He’s persistent, though, cajoling and threatening in turns, trying to persuade her.  Nothing he says touches her at all until he asks her one simple question:

“Are you still Charles’s Raven?  Or are you Mystique?”

She opens her mouth to answer, and can’t.  Deep down, she still doesn’t know. 

Magneto must see that he’s scored a point, because the corner of his mouth lifts up in a subtle smirk.  It’s time to cut this conversation off while she’s still ahead; obviously, he isn’t going to tell her anything else of use.

With one final, “Goodbye, Erik,” she disappears into the crowd.  It’s the work of moment to get lost in the city, but Magneto’s question lingers in her mind for a long time after she leaves him behind.

***

Over the years, Mystique has built up quite a stockpile of weapons, most of them confiscated from one government outpost or another.  Governments are always the worst offenders; powerful men will do anything to stay in power, and she’s seen more than she ever wanted to of what “anything” entails.  Most of her visits to top-secret facilities have been less than pleasant, but if there’s one thing she does enjoy, it's a visit to the gift shop on her way out the door.

Take this little beauty, for example: a plastic gun, complete with plastic bullets, courtesy of the CIA.  It was originally designed to help agents bypass metal detectors, but she’d be lying if she said a secondary purpose never occurred to her.  Given recent events, it seems prudent to keep it close by.  She doesn’t think Erik will try to keep her from killing Trask again, but she hasn’t lived this long by taking stupid chances.  Somehow she gets the feeling that she’s going to see Magneto again very soon.  Maybe it’s just paranoia – or the fact that she can’t stop turning his question over and over in head.

For the first time in a long time she thinks about the Raven that was, about her comic books and her code names and her dreams of becoming a superhero.  She wonders if that girl would be amazed or horrified at the things Mystique has done.  If she had known beforehand what she would have to sacrifice, would she have made the same choices?  Would she think it was all worth it?

She looks down at the plastic gun in her hand and sees the autopsy photographs from those dossiers spread out before her instead.  Azazel.  Angel.  Sean. 

_Yes_ , she thinks.  _Yes, it was worth it.  It_ is _worth it.  If I can keep that from happening ever again, it is worth everything._

Mystique holds tight to that thought as she makes her way toward the heart of Washington, D.C..  It’s another beautiful day, but after what happened in Paris she’s not putting any stock in weather omens.  She’s heading toward the White House lawn, where the Sentinels are scheduled to have their public debut.  Trask is sure to be there; he wouldn’t miss the opportunity to show off his pet project.  The closer she gets to her destination the more guards there are milling around, but none of them give her a second look.  All they see is one of their own, the Secret Service Agent she bound and gagged after stealing his uniform and identification.  Luckily Joshua Crawford doesn’t seem to be much of a talker, because no one expects her to do more than maintain stoic silence as she takes her place. 

Like any big event, there’s a lot of waiting around before the action starts, but after a small eternity she hears Trask’s oily voice projected out over the crowd.  She starts making her way up to the podium, trying not to seem too eager as she gets closer to her target.  Already she can feel her focus narrowing down to a single pinpoint.  Her gun is in her hand, her breath is in her throat, and Trask is standing on the stage; everything else fades away.  She starts to take aim…and freezes.

_Charles._

She’s not sure why she wastes her time arguing with him (it’s not like he ever listens to her anyway), but she can’t seem to break the habit even after all these years.  At least no one notices her muttering to herself, the crowd’s attention focused on the giant murderous robots lined up on the sunny lawn.  _Where are the ominous storm clouds when you need them_ , she thinks again, just as a massive shadow passes overhead. 

Needless to say, it’s not a storm cloud.  Magneto always did know how to make an entrance.  And okay, maybe she’s a little bit impressed by the sight of the massive stadium hovering in the air, but it’s still not the time for this. 

The stadium crashes to the ground and the crowd erupts into a screaming, panicked frenzy, which must break Charles’s concentration because Mystique’s body is abruptly her own again.  She scans the people around her and spots Trask, being escorted to safety along with the President a few others.  It’s the work of a moment to fall in line with the other Secret Service members, so close to Trask that she can smell his cologne.  Magneto might have made a mess of things, but so far it’s working in her favor.  _Let Charles and Erik fight it out_ , she thinks.  _Neither of them is going to notice me while they’re focused on each other.  All I have to do is wait for the right moment and take my shot._     

***

Mystique plays her part beautifully.  Just as she predicted, it all ends with her standing alone, mutant and proud, pointing a gun at a helpless Trask.  A deep sense of satisfaction curls through her stomach as she peers down at him.  _This is for my friends, you bastard_ , she thinks, just as everything around her freezes in place.  Charles again.  She knows it’s just an illusion, but all of her senses tell her that it’s Charles standing in front of her.  Her finger jerks away from the trigger like she’s been burnt.  Even after everything, just thinking of shooting her brother makes her feel sick.

Charles says a lot of the same things Magneto did, about the future, about what they need to do to save themselves.  Of course, that’s where the similarity ends.  He pleads with her not to murder Trask, not to make mutants the enemy.  As if the very existence of the Sentinels doesn’t prove that it’s already too late for that.

She says as much to Charles, and he just shakes his head.

“No, don’t you see?  You’ve saved these men’s lives!  You can show them a better way.”  He gives her a rueful smile, and it makes her heart ache.  “Look at us, Raven.  I’ve been trying to control you this whole time, and look where it’s gotten us.  I trust you to do the right thing.  Whatever happens now, it’s all in your hands.”

Charles vanishes, and it’s Trask in front of her when the world starts moving again.  Her eyes are damp, and she feels the weight of the camera on her back like a physical touch, a reminder that the world is watching.  All the satisfaction she felt earlier has drained away, replaced by a crushing sense of responsibility.            

Angel.  Sean.  Azazel.  She closes her eyes for a brief moment and sees them again.  _It is worth everything_ , she tells herself.  _If I can keep that from happening ever again, it is even worth letting him live._

She takes a deep breath, opens her eyes, and lowers the gun. 

Trask is staring at her, utterly uncomprehending.  Her hands are still shaking as she turns away.  She can hear Magneto’s voice in her head, calling her weak, accusing of her of being the affection-starved little girl who lived for Charles’s approval. 

She ignores it.

She’s spent so many years running from everything Charles stood for, everything she used to be when they were children together.  She thought that if she gave in, even just a little, it would mean the end of all she’s accomplished.  But she’s stronger than that.  And it’s time she finally learned to trust herself.          

She stands over Magneto where he lays panting on the ground, staring up at her with wide eyes. 

“I have an answer for you now,” she says, placing a foot on his chest and leaning in, close enough to smell the metallic tang of the blood on his neck.  The blood that she put there.  “I am both.  I always have been.”

Confusion slowly gives way to wry amusement as he catches her meaning.  For all that he obviously disapproves, there is something in his eyes that might be respect.

“He’s all yours, Charles,” she says, ripping Magneto’s helmet off and turning to leave.  As the sounds of chaos fade behind her, she makes a promise to herself: they can call her whatever they want, but the world is going to know her name.   

**Author's Note:**

> All the characters in Raven's comic books are of my own creation. Can anyone tell that I want Mystique to wear her iconic white dress in the next movie? Please? Pretty please you will look so awesome I promise.


End file.
